Home from hospital
I want to thank everyone so much for their responses. I now understand what you mean about the importance of rest. I was home maybe an hour and a half before I needed to sleep for another 3! It ha...
Forum Discussion
Post-surgery my energy is quite good (I actually feel *less* fatigued than before) but the 'area' is still really uncomfortable, especially my arm. I had a 'level 3' node clearance (that just means they took as much adipose tissue as possible). Until the day before surgery I thought that somehow the surgeons would just pick out each lymph node, (like chooks pecking at grain). It's a learning curve!
I'm getting a fair bit of fluid under the scar on my breast. I keep going back to my notes where it says, in bold & underlined, This Is Not Dangerous . But it feels awful, like Tonya (I think) said, like really tight tape. And I'm experiencing mad, random sensations -- sometimes like water trickling under my arm, sometimes like someone is stabbing my armpit with a chopstick, sometimes like an ant running along my arm. But these never last long. Weirdest of all is that my armpit and the back of my left arm are almost completely numb now. That's nerve damage, I guess, and could be more or less permanent. Are you still taking painkillers? I am, but not all the time.
Have you ever done yoga? I'm finding it really helpful and calming to do some (very static) poses, like 'mountain pose', and 'staff pose'. I'm not sweating the arm exercises too much -- I'm just doing them very gently, and stopping if it hurts too much.
I SO can't wait for my pathology results -- one more sleep. Then I'll feel like I have a better idea of what I'm dealing with. Will post news when I've digested it.
Cheers Amanda, sounds like you're going really well.
H